Will Ripley joins CNN from 9News

Will Ripley, 32, a 9News investigative reporter for the last three years, is jumping to a plum assignment as CNN’s Tokyo correspondent effective March 8.

Feb. 20 is his last day at 9News. He’ll spend a week with CNN in New York, a week at headquarters in Atlanta, then off to his new life. He’s working on his Japanese.

“I got Rosetta Stone Japanese and have been studying morning and evening,” he said. “I’ll have a tutor in the bureau and will be working with native speakers, some of whom have been with CNN for 20 years.”

The hire has been in the works the last few months. He’ll join a three-person staff in the heart of Tokyo — a senior producer, bureau manager and photographer. “I’ve been Skyping with them,” he said. He’ll have an apartment a five-minute walk away.

They’re brainstorming ideas about U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, the Fukushima nuclear plant and the aftermath of earthquake, so he can “hit the ground running.”

Ripley has spent 15 years in local TV news. He joined KUSA from KRGV in South Texas in 2011 where he picked up Spanish and did enough border and South American coverage (on cartels, gang problems, etc.) to serve as international reporting experience. Before that he worked for smaller stations in Missouri. His dream since watching Christiane Amanpour as a kid was to be a foreign correspondent.

The Tokyo bureau’s day begins with a conference call with the Asia Pacific hub in Hong Kong, linked in with editors in Atlanta. The process is slower, he said. “I’m used to calling a source in Denver and asking to swing by and talk that day. In Japan, you have to submit a written proposal,” the source sends back notes with questions. “I’m used to turning multiple packages in a day, in Japan it will be two or three packages in a week.”

Ripley follows Kyung Lah, who moved to Tokyo for CNN in November 2007 and left to join the L.A. bureau in 2012.

Leaving Colorado is “bittersweet,” he said. “Only a tremendous opportunity would make me want to leave 9News.”

His next order of business: on Thursday he was scheduled to meet his mother at DIA. She’s flying in from Connecticut to take Ripley’s dog, a red heeler mix named Dee Dee, who’s “going to live with grandma.”

9News is losing it talent. Jace Larson left, and now Will Ripley. I have stated before that the local news is becoming less investigative and less credible and more entertainment focused. If viwers want more credible reporting then call or write the station managers and lodge your concerns

Joanne Ostrow has been watching TV since before "reality" required quotation marks. "Hill Street Blues" was life-changing. If Dickens, Twain or Agatha Christie were alive today, they'd be writing for television. And proud of it.